CHAPTER III.

      The World's Anti-Slavery Convention, London, June 12, 1840.

       Table of Contents

      Individualism rather than Authority—Personal appearance of Abolitionists—Clerical attempt to silence Woman—Double battle against the tyranny of sex and color—Bigoted Abolitionists—James G. Birney likes freedom on a Southern plantation, but not at his own fireside—John Bull never dreamt that Woman would answer his call—The venerable Thomas Clarkson received by the Convention standing—Lengthy debate on "Female" delegates—The "Females" rejected—William Lloyd Garrison refused to sit in the Convention.

      In gathering up the threads of history in the last century, and weaving its facts and philosophy together, one can trace the liberal social ideas, growing out of the political and religious revolutions in France, Germany, Italy, and America; and their tendency to substitute for the divine right of kings, priests, and orders of nobility, the higher and broader one of individual conscience and judgment in all matters pertaining to this life and that which is to come. It is not surprising that in so marked a transition period from the old to the new, as seen in the eighteenth century, that women, trained to think and write and speak, should have discovered that they, too, had some share in the new-born liberties suddenly announced to the world. That the radical political theories, propagated in different countries, made their legitimate impress on the minds of women of the highest culture, is clearly proved by their writings and conversation. While in their ignorance, women are usually more superstitious, more devoutly religious than men; those trained to thought, have generally manifested more interest in political questions, and have more frequently spoken and written on such themes, than on those merely religious. This may be attributed, in a measure, to the fact that the tendency of woman's mind, at this stage of her development, is toward practical, rather than toward speculative science.

      Questions of political economy lie within the realm of positive knowledge; those of theology belong to the world of mysteries and abstractions, which those minds, only, that imagine they have compassed the known, are ambitious to enter and explore. And yet, the quickening power of the Protestant Reformation roused woman, as well as man, to new and higher thought. The bold declarations of Luther, placing individual judgment above church authority, the faith of the Quaker that the inner light was a better guide than arbitrary law, the religious idealism of the Transcendentalists, and their teachings that souls had no sex, had each a marked influence in developing woman's self-assertion. Such ideas making all divine revelations as veritable and momentous to one soul, as another, tended directly to equalize the members of the human family, and place men and women on the same plane of moral responsibility.

      The revelations of science, too, analyzing and portraying the wonders and beauties of this material world, crowned with new dignity, man and woman,—Nature's last and proudest work. Combe and Spurzheim, proving by their Phrenological discoveries that the feelings, sentiments, and affections of the soul mould and shape the skull, gave new importance to woman's thought as mother of the race. Thus each new idea in religion, politics, science, and philosophy, tending to individualism, rather than authority, came into the world freighted with new hopes of liberty for woman.

      And when in the progress of civilization the time had fully come for the recognition of the feminine element in humanity, women, in every civilized country unknown to each other, began simultaneously to demand a broader sphere of action. Thus the first public demand for political equality by a body of women in convention assembled, was a link in the chain of woman's development, binding the future with the past, as complete and necessary in itself, as the events of any other period of her history. The ridicule of facts does not change their character. Many who study the past with interest, and see the importance of seeming trifles in helping forward great events, often fail to understand some of the best pages of history made under their own eyes. Hence the woman suffrage movement has not yet been accepted as the legitimate outgrowth of American ideas—a component part of the history of our republic—but is falsely considered the willful outburst of a few unbalanced minds, whose ideas can never be realized under any form of government.

      Among the immediate causes that led to the demand for the equal political rights of women, in this country, we may note three:

      1. The discussion in several of the State Legislatures on the property rights of married women, which, heralded by the press with comments grave and gay, became the topic of general interest around many fashionable dinner-tables, and at many humble firesides. In this way all phases of the question were touched upon, involving the relations of the sexes, and gradually widening to all human interests—political, religious, civil, and social. The press and pulpit became suddenly vigilant in marking out woman's sphere, while woman herself seemed equally vigilant in her efforts to step outside the prescribed limits.

      2. A great educational work was accomplished by the able lectures of Frances Wright, on political, religious, and social questions. Ernestine L. Rose, following in her wake, equally liberal in her religious opinions, and equally well informed on the science of government, helped to deepen and perpetuate the impression Frances Wright had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers.

      3. And above all other causes of the "Woman Suffrage Movement," was the Anti-Slavery struggle in this country. The ranks of the Abolitionists were composed of the most eloquent orators, the ablest logicians, men and women of the purest moral character and best minds in the nation. They were usually spoken of in the early days as "an illiterate, ill-mannered, poverty-stricken, crazy set of long-haired Abolitionists." While the fact is, some of the most splendid specimens of manhood and womanhood, in physical appearance, in culture, refinement, and knowledge of polite life, were found among the early Abolitionists. James G. Birney, John Pierpont, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Maria Weston Chapman, Helen Garrison, Ann Green Phillips, Abby Kelly, Paulina Wright Davis, Lucretia Mott, were all remarkably fine-looking.

      In the early Anti-Slavery conventions, the broad principles of human rights were so exhaustively discussed, justice, liberty, and equality, so clearly taught, that the women who crowded to listen, readily learned the lesson of freedom for themselves, and early began to take part in the debates and business affairs of all associations. Woman not only felt every pulsation of man's heart for freedom, and by her enthusiasm inspired the glowing eloquence that maintained him through the struggle, but earnestly advocated with her own lips human freedom and equality. When Angelina and Sarah Grimke began to lecture in New England, their audiences were at first composed entirely of women, but gentlemen, hearing of their eloquence and power, soon began timidly to slip into the back seats, one by one. And before the public were aroused to the dangerous innovation, these women were speaking in crowded, promiscuous assemblies. The clergy opposed to the abolition movement first took alarm, and issued a pastoral letter, warning their congregations against the influence of such women. The clergy identified with anti-slavery associations took alarm also, and the initiative steps to silence the women, and to deprive them of the right to vote in the business meetings, were soon taken. This action culminated in a division in the Anti-Slavery Association. In